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Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

Saline9515

a year ago

The article says explicitly that senior software developers were fired to replace them with less qualified Indians. This is not about vibes, this is a mix of racism and greed. If roles were reversed, you would be crying about racism.

thisislife2

a year ago

I guess it could be construed as a kind of a racism - they were fired or forced to resign because cheaper, younger and more subservient workers were available.

Dalewyn

a year ago

>collectivism and subservience towards authority figures are taught as virtues

Remind me to never fly on a plane piloted by an Indian flight crew.

(Protip: If you can't stand up to your captain, your plane is going down.)

fakedang

a year ago

> Remind me to never fly on a plane piloted by an Indian flight crew.

(Protip: If you can't stand up to your captain, your plane is going down.)

Not sure if you're joking, but this is actually cited as one of the reasons behind one crash.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Express_Flight_134...

bjourne

a year ago

Same with South Korean airline crashes: https://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/cnn_asks_if_koreas_hierarch... But who knows if any of this is true or if "hierarchical cultures cause airline crashes" is just pop-sci bs.

Lammy

a year ago

Also KAL 801 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801#Investig...

joncrocks

a year ago

See cultural `power-distance`.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_...

a year ago

When these hiring decisions are based on gut feelings or "vibes," these subjective judgments often reflect an unconscious bias

Ntrails

a year ago

> these subjective judgements often reflect an unconscious bias

Are you sure it's unconscious?

Say it's conscious (eg "I like my hires to be scrupulously polite and deferential") and that overlaps with a cultural norm - is that problematic?

How about "I like my employees to be extremely punctual". Or "I like my employees to be dressed smartly". Is correlation with any subset of people sufficient to be illegal? Should it be?

SpicyLemonZest

a year ago

Liking your employees to be extremely punctual is pretty objective, but the other two are potentially problematic if you do them wrong.

One example where this comes up a lot is hair. People from backgrounds where straight hair is the norm envision "well-dressed" to include neat and orderly hair, often more neat and more orderly than people with type 3 or 4 hair can actually achieve. So many areas where both straight and curly hair are common have found it necessary to stipulate in law that any grooming expectation you impose has to accommodate the full range of natural hair textures.

harshaxnim

a year ago

You’re not wrong, but that bias is not stemming out of Racism imo. Also I’m not saying that the bias is acceptable, but it shows a different kind of social problem that often transcends classes and gender.

thewileyone

a year ago

These "vibes" extend further than that. Region/district/city/town/village/neighborhood/familial relation is the breakdown that I've seen. I've known of qualified Indians not applying for new roles because the hiring manager is from a different part of India (Tamil Nadu vs Uttar Pradesh, for example). They know they're not going to get it. There's also the caste system to take in consideration. The ones at the top are all inexplicably Brahmin and would never promote a non-Brahmin to their level.

I've seen all this OUTSIDE of the US, in a non-Indian Asian country that had a high number of Indian software developers in a shared service centre.

mozman

a year ago

I went to interview at a fortune 50 company that is primarily based in India.

a year ago

They = an all-male dev team, and it wasn't a complaint. The lead never complained. Probably considered herself very lucky to have landed in a lead role and didn't want to rock the boat. They were all working for an outsourcer who we (the client) had engaged. However, it became apparent to us (the client) that this was happening, in our offices, even if it wasn't to our employees. We did an immediate soft intervention of placing a permanent (non-Indian) colleague into the team in a scrum master type role, who did a great job of facilitating meetings fairly and basically telling the men (boys, frankly) to shut up once in a while. We probably broke a rule by unspokenly deciding that the scrum master had to be non-Indian. Meanwhile, HR cogitated and came to the conclusion that we had no contractual right to invoke any process on the men as they weren't our direct employees. However, we did have the right to ask that people be replaced if we were not satisfied with performance. Cue debate on what constitutes performance. Cue debate on whether the project could take the hit of losing its whole dev team all at once. This all took a long time, as we believed there was a chance that the intervention would work if given time. Maybe this was a teachable moment? And aside from the appalling attitude, they were decent devs with a lot of difficult-to-replace knowledge. Not gonna lie, we hoped the problem would go away if we did the bare minimum "fix". Communication improved, but it was an uphill battle.

As it happened, fate intervened, and wider organizational spasms caused the project to be mothballed. We had to give notice to the whole dev team, including the lead. Fortunately, this was a megacorp, and other projects swiftly moved in, and new work orders were drafted. This gave us an opportunity to approve the team sheet for the outsourced roles. The female tech lead was waved on through. The troglodytes were rejected. The reason was stated. We received a duly grovelling "this will never happen again" response from the account manager. They never worked for us again under my watch, but I believe they were simply rotated on to another client rather than receiving any material comeuppance.

So, they kind of got away with it - but also kind of didn't.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

Rinzler89

a year ago

[flagged]

dang

a year ago

a year ago

definitely my experience dealing with them at F500s. Indian mafia running the IT org, and a PITA to get things out of them.

personal favorite was that someone from network support ran a script that changed ownership of all of the docker containers and associated configs, outputs, and logs to root. we had pretty clear proof in the logs that a Cog support tech did it, and basically had to escalate to the CTO and get him to threaten a lawsuit to get them to fix it.

Also watched caste bulling play out in real time in a cramped meeting room in the RDU Triangle, in NC. Wasn't clear what the strain was until later when a full-timer of Indian extraction explained it to me.

bufferoverflow

a year ago

Yup. Currently working at a large multinational. Pretty much 90% of developers and managers are Indian. Very few Americans. Some Chinese and some Slavic.

I have never seen such ratios in 20+ years of my career.

skynr

a year ago

We have a high proportion of onshore on-site Indian employees who are absolutely awesome. However they've gone through the local company's recruitment process so will have been selected for fit.

The experience with outsourced resources is significantly different.

I build a good rapport with one who talked me through the politics and power plays behind the scenes at their midsize outsourcing arm. Just very different social values to Western orgs. Incredibly hierarchical with no value given to autonomy or independence. Those who want to do well and try really hard frequently get their helmets dented by over zealous managers.

Also experienced - ex offshore very often have incredible cvs until you interview and there's no actual experience. Polling the above contact he mentioned that for some offshore orgs promotion is literally time in role, not competency based.

My experience, your mileage may vary, and I reiterate those I've worked with on-site have been awesome, generous, funny and very supportive people.

AtlasBarfed

a year ago

The bean counters sure didn't care, this was blatantly obvious even two decades ago.

I don't fault the outsourcing companies it's nothing different than what occurs with American consulting outsourcing before offshoring: get the deal signed, get the responsibilities transferred, and milk the cow.

The anti nerd bias of american culture means that IT is less respected than even blue collar workers by management.

The higher salaries of IT are begrudgingly given. I predict over the next two decades they will collapse to what typical engineers are paid: as in it's more lucrative to be a plumber

dartharva

a year ago

a year ago

The Indians migrating to the US via h1b visas are not coming from the slums or ghettoes. Higher education to foreigners in the US is essentially an immigration scheme - they pay $60-$100k (+living expenses) for a useless graduate degree which only the rich can afford, then get funneled into consulting firms like Cognizant/Infosys on OPT/EAD visas before picking up their h1b for ~ 6 years. This pretty much gets you in the US for ~ 10 years before getting a green card.

> The Indians in top leadership positions you see in tech firms are rare exceptions

This is absolutely not the case. Despite being 2% of the population, Indians are way overrepresented in tech leadership positions (not just CEO/CTO). I recall in a meeting at a med size tech firm I worked at, the recruiting/HR department no longer considered Asians of any ethnicity a minority and lumped them in with white males.

red-iron-pine

a year ago

> the recruiting/HR department no longer considered Asians of any ethnicity a minority and lumped them in with white males.

there was, IIRC, an infamous spat at a FAANG about that

sien

a year ago

a year ago

> (in theory at least, in practice there are still biases, but tracking ethnicities won't fix that, since that's human nature)

That’s what we’re trying to fix (or at least mitigate) in the US. You say it is just human nature, but we’re a pretty diverse country, so we have a strong incentive to proactively try and see if we can make it work.

Rinzler89

a year ago

You still haven't answered how employers keeping track of the ethnicities of employees helps against discrimination in any way.

To me that's exactly what helps lead to discrimination versus not knowing ethnicities and treating employees as anonymized numbers which would be fair to everyone.

bee_rider

a year ago

Nope, and I won’t. There are a lot of programs, and with various levels of effectiveness, and I don’t particularly want to dive into the nitty-gritty details of whether or not each one is working well. We haven’t got a perfect solution. But, I think it is self-evident that without collecting any data, we are just… hoping it’ll all work out? That’s not a plan.

Currently in the US, businesses don’t actively have official policies of bigotry. If they did, collecting that data could be harmful. But instead we have bigotry as a sort of soft social thing, a compounding of many little challenges, “bad culture fit,” that sort of thing. Because it is subtle, we need to keep it from slipping under the radar.

Eumenes

a year ago

Handwavy answer with zero substance - sounds like an HR reply. I encourage everyone reading to lie/fib about race/ethnicity data. Also, make up a pronoun/gender identity. Waste these suckers time.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

a year ago

Because there are just that many applicants from India? The result of this is also that Indians have virtually no scope of settling down in the US, since the waitlist for green card for them goes beyond 134 years. Which means none of those H1B holders are going to stay.

Eumenes

a year ago

Who processes the applicants? Indian bosses (see the tweet/articles). Many US permeant residents are being passed over at these big consulting firms in favor of Indians. Its nepotism, 100%. Indians in the US are not discriminated against. Despite being < 2% of the population of the US, they have an oversized influence in many industries/management level roles.

thisislife2

a year ago

> why does India get to have 75% of all h1b visas? Seems not very diverse.

I'd wager it's a deliberate US state policy. It's because we indians are good immigrants - whether it be US, Europe or the middle-east, we tend to respect (even if we necessarily don't like) the local culture and laws and try to avoid trouble and be good citizens (often better than in our own country :). And the US is a country built by immigrants that needs people. That is why Indians today are one of the largest immigrant group in the US. Also, cheap labour. That's capitalism at work - why hire American when the whole world can be your HR pool?

Eumenes

a year ago

> I'd wager it's a deliberate US state policy.

Exactly. If India sided with America's enemies, those visas would go bye-bye. The money being made in the US, being sent back to India, probably represents a good chunk of GDP.

See Australia. George Bush gave them a sweetheart visa deal in return for their support in the middle east in the early 2000s post 9-11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa#History

mr90210

a year ago

I am going to disclose my own bias here: I tend to look for multicultural teams and somewhat evenly distributed.

One major issue with blind meritocracy is it strongly favors those from families who can invest in their children - aka the rich. Though, there is a path for improvement for those with raw intelligence, unless the tests favor brute force memorization. Like most Chinese tests historically have.

dang

a year ago

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/USTechWorkers/status/1843744799607898260 to what looks like the article it points to.

Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

binary_slinger

a year ago

I was at one point located in Plano, Texas which has a large Indian IT community. When my job search started around eight years ago fresh out of school with a masters degree I was passed up by every IT firm in the area. This is a hard and controversial topic to discuss, and I apologize if anyone find my words here offensive. But the pattern I recognized was if the interviewers were Indian I would not be passing the interview. I have no proof of this. But my Indian peers at my school who applied to the same firms with similar credentials and skill level had little trouble.

atcognizant

a year ago

Some of favorite coworkers have been from India during my career. This includes both their personalities as I got to know them and their demeanor at work.

I have worked at Cognizant for just over a year. Though we don't have this problem on my immediate team, it is something we talk about because it's obvious in other teams and as an overall culture at the company.

It doesn't seem like overt discrimination (from me and my coworkers limited perspectives). There's a couple factors

1. People hire who they know. About two thirds of the employees are of Indian descent. So on average they hire their friends and former coworkers who are also Indian.

2. Leadership requires the offshore teams to be on every project. This is to keep costs down and because the other lines of business besides their main and original one (staff augmentation) are relatively new.

3. A minority (but not a small one) of Indians really are just blatantly discriminatory.

commandlinefan

a year ago

> Some of favorite coworkers have been from India

Mine, too. Some of my least favorite coworkers have been from India as well. Mostly because almost all of my coworkers have been from India since about 1997.

rudnevr

a year ago

I worked for Cognizant for a couple of years on multiple engagements, and I'm not Indian. I saw different things, and obviously there was some dynamic around ethnicity, from 'I'll only hire Indians because they work harder' to Indian boss abusing another Indian programmer while excluding me. I was somewhat advanced level, though, maybe that played a role, so for me personally it was an overall OK time. Overall it's good that this conversation eventually happening, I think, it's in everybody's interest.

bushido

a year ago

The comments on this story are very interesting - not in the good way. This rhetoric is very similar to previous ones that existed in over the decades like Jewish/Polish/Chinese/etc people only doing business with other people of their groups. Or democrats/republicans in deep blue/red states sticking with their own.

Back to the topic:

I know a lot of 2nd, 3rd generation Indians who definitely do not fit the stereotypes.

What we're likely seeing is the effect of three things:

- Indian has a very community based dynamic that prioritizes group identity over individual identities, a number of folks have never experienced being outside their groups

- Newly arrived Individual are likely experiencing culture shock, it happens to most people. It's very much a fight or flight response. People either choose the tribe they know, or find a new one. The later is rare

- Most other ethnic groups we're hearing about took a few generations to get to white collar jobs, they already understood local norms, because these were their norms. We're seeing a lot of 1st generation Indians (and some other groups) start in white collar professions, and that will play out differently.

p_l

a year ago

I think it's offloading well known problematic companies issues like Cognizant onto nationality.

It's the nature of service that WITCH prefers to provide and puts people in position where it's hard to change it, and the executives who contract with WITCH.

bushido

a year ago

Good point. That initialism is new to me, I can see how companies that fall into that group can be problematic.

horns4lyfe

a year ago

None of this will matter when the entirety of IT and software dev becomes an ethnic enclave for Indians, while being told that there’s just not enough local talent. It’s going to happen, just a matter of time, and we’ll all suffer for it.

matrix87

a year ago

something weird on my team is that most of them (around 40) are from the exact same province in india

just seems kind of bizarre to me, like deciding to only hire people from Florida for a team in California

simfree

a year ago

Indian communities in the US can often be clanish, and self-segregate to specific areas of a neighborhood or town.

You can see this in action on the eastside of Lake Washington, always fun to get glared at for being at the wrong block in Samamish, or the wrong (or sometimes right) condo building in Bellevue. Do not bring a dog! You will get solid stares, does not matter how said dog behaves or what local policy is.

Seattle notably legislated against the caste system persisting in the city, but from what I hear it still is a thing stateside. Most of the Indian community lives outside Seattle though.

odux

a year ago

Language, region and caste are different things though. Caste is a big problem in India but very rarely a problem for discrimination in the tech/highly educated Indian circles in the US. Caste is sometimes very closely related to “culture” so it may be seen in things like weddings sometimes to though. The Seattle anti caste discrimination law was more political than practically useful.

But language is a problem and you will see people speaking the same Indian language group themselves together.

matrix87

a year ago

I'm not really holding any of that against them because moving to a new country with a different culture is hard

Slava_Propanei

a year ago

[dead]

matrix87

a year ago

Edit:

And I will say, they've shown me a great deal of hospitality

I see a lot of negative feelings in the comments here. If anyone is having negative feelings they should be directed to corporations who have artificially engineered this situation. The people involved are not to blame

sumedh

a year ago

lupusreal

a year ago

Unionization could, at least in principle, offer a solution.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

Nefariouspurpus

a year ago

Although I'm not deeply familiar with the specifics of this particular case, it raises broader questions about the industry that specializes in outsourcing, particularly to countries like India. If outsourcing is a core part of a company's business model, isn’t it inevitable that more jobs will continue to be funneled to countries like India, and, consequently, to Indian workers?

All discrimination is contextual and local. The number of groups has nothing to do with it.

lazide

a year ago

So you say, but history has shown that if groups don’t exist to allow easy discrimination, they will be created to allow such discrimination.

So it’s a good sign of long, well established, and ingrained discrimination, eh? With associated infrastructure to make it easier to continue, and ‘fairer’ in that it allows almost everyone to have someone under them to take their own angst out on. (Except those ‘outside the system’ anyway, which historically were the Dalits, but now even they are in the system eh?)

dartharva

a year ago

> So you say, but history has shown that if groups don’t exist to allow easy discrimination, they will be created to allow such discrimination.

Yes, that's what I am saying. In- and out-groups are made contextually in each unique situation.

> So it’s a good sign of long, well established, and ingrained discrimination, eh? With associated infrastructure to make it easier to continue, and ‘fairer’ in that it allows almost everyone to have someone under them to take their own angst out on. (Except those ‘outside the system’ anyway, which historically were the Dalits, but now even they are in the system eh?)

Can't understand what you're trying to say here.

lazide

a year ago

Can’t understand, or refuse to understand?

Why create new groups when you have proven and well trod ones handy to choose from?

TrapLord_Rhodo

a year ago

your thoughts seem to align closely with René Girard's theories on mimetic desire and scapegoating.

qnleigh

a year ago

dudefeliciano

a year ago

so tired of the self-hating/self-loathing label when someone criticises their own nationality/ethnicity

tho342424334234

a year ago

[flagged]

meiraleal

a year ago

You can't make yourself look less racist by pointing to other racist cultures (while describing with details your own racist behavior).

tock

a year ago

It's weird how racism against Indians online is so normalised. I see the same on reddit too.

p_l

a year ago

Thank WiPro/Infosys/Tata/Cognizant/HCL and everyone who apes their practices.

The end result is that you see a mention of "Bangalore" and you get immediate shivers because it doesn't matter how nice and good as a person the people you are forced to work with are, if the entire qualification you can discern is that they are statistically expected to speak english, and their work environment and supervisors enforce certain counter-productive behaviours. Which is honestly abusive to the poor person in Bangalore, because it's not like they can learn the skills this way either.

To the point that I once had security team in a company where specific area of security might involve "uncomfortable questions from government" in cases of failure (fortunately not defense industry) actually sponsor my efforts to bypass supposedly crucial firewall - because connectivity including said firewall were handled by TCS.

kylehotchkiss

a year ago

But things a LOT of us here use often and might even enjoy are built in Banaglore too, and it's a shame it doesn't get more publicity. Target has a fairly massive office over there working on their tech (plz correct me if I'm wrong) https://india.target.com

p_l

a year ago

It's somewhat close to how I got myself out of blaming the people trapped in those jobs. It's not the people, it's the specific family of scummy businesses.

Fortunately in Poland our local equivalent (Comarch) never got that big, and doesn't suffocate the job market. Also tended to hire slightly higher up, probably because it couldn't compete on rates with WITCH for tech support.

mardifoufs

a year ago

Weird thing to comment on an article about Indian racism, but okay.

Saline9515

a year ago

The article reports about Indian racism in a company, but they are the victims?

hshshshsvsv

a year ago

[flagged]

dang

a year ago

> It's okay to be racist against Indians according to hacker news guidelines

Please let's not respond to false or mean comments by making up more false or mean things. Nothing could be further against the HN guidelines. We (and I personally) have banned many accounts for posting slurs against Indians (same as against any other group), including in this thread.

The only reason posts like that would go unmoderated is that we haven't seen them. We don't come close to seeing everything (or even 10%) of what gets posted to HN. We rely on users to point us to the things that most need attention, so the helpful way to react to such a comment is to flag it and/or email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

lupusreal

a year ago

I've never seen let alone worked in a team that only had white people. Not once. I've never seen nor heard of a team that only had Japanese or Koreans or Russians or any other singular group except two: Chinese and Indians. These two groups have a unique tendency to form ethnically exclusive teams at companies and get away with it.

RestlessMind

a year ago

hshshshsvsv

a year ago

Generalizing everyone from a region/group with some negative trait is racisam.

If your brain try to label me as someone who practice caste system because you think I am from India is lazy/stupid computation and racism.

Actually vast majority of the Indians suffer from negative consequences of Castisam since they are supposed to be lower classes and society descrimated against them historically.

That said, https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/10/07/h-1b-visa-company-s... seems to be the exact same article (author, timestamp, and all) published by the same group (Bay Area News Group) but without a paywall. (Both siliconvalley.com and mercurynews.com are registered to MediaNews Group, which is the owner of Bay Area News Group as of 2006.)

dang

a year ago

Switched to that latter link now. Thanks!

Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dartharva

a year ago

dang? Where are you?

This comment section has gone to the gutter. Please flag this thread. This isn't even that significant of a news - we can come back to this when the court actually hands a ruling.

dang

a year ago

I've done some moderating in here now, but if you want to alert us to something like this, it's necessary to email hn@ycombinator.com.

If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

user

a year ago

[deleted]

a year ago

I have many Indian colleagues and they do tend not to speak English among them in the office. There needs to be someone else involved in the conversation for them to stick to English.

Another aspect is that I have found that they are quite hierarchical, probably a cultural trait. So how much they stick to English also depends on how senior the "non-Indian(s)" are compared to them. If you are their senior they are very nice.

drewbitt

a year ago

> was this due to them speaking in a different language in actual professional meetings

This happened frequently at a WITCH I worked at out of college. The meeting would be in English then have segments change in the middle as certain speakers switched languages. Luckily, I often had a coworker stand up for me to mention to use English although I did miss many conversations.

fragmede

(I still think Trump is the lesser evil, since he is far more competent in foreign policy and the economy will improve. And he does exactly nothing w.r.t the scary sounding election talk.)

bryanlarsen

a year ago

> since he is far more competent in foreign policy

The guy foreign leaders call the "laughing fool"?

a year ago

This is unfortunately a widespread practice even in less tech heavy companies. It starts with a very aggressive C suit or manager responding to everything 24/7, supported by “cheap” labor who say yes to everything and promise the World, usually extra complicated. Fast forward a couple years and the company/project is a expensive hell-hole of disfunction and suffering. CEOs and the board also are to blame for this, they are aware, they just don’t care as they like people who say yes and don’t give them any bad news.

eastbound

a year ago

Which explains why its market value is hovering at $160 while its former worth, when it was properly managed, was $3-400. Am I spot on?

The problem is that every Fortune 500’s internal systems are hooked up to it.

logicchains

a year ago

Atlassian? As a user, I haven't noticed any decline in quality; it's just as painful to use now as it was a decade ago.

wordofx

a year ago

You can’t notice decline in quality when the quality is already so bad that any change feels like an improvement while still being bad.

aleph_minus_one

a year ago

> You can’t notice decline in quality when the quality is already so bad that any change feels like an improvement while still being bad.

In this case we don't have a decline in quality.

physicsguy

a year ago

A decade ago, you could self-host though.

throw49sjwo1

a year ago

Nobody (important) wanted that, though. It was done only because the cloud wasn't available, the moment it became available every big company migrated.

p_l

a year ago

Self-hosting JIRA and Confluence was a double edged sword:

a year ago

This. Every single Atlassian product I have used has always been painfully slow garbage; and I have been forced to use them at various jobs over a decade.

I don't think it was ever a magically good Australian product that Indian hires from Microsoft suddenly ruined.

eastbound

a year ago

It’s also probably 5x more expensive than a decade ago. As you said, still painful to use.

a year ago

[deleted]

bbor

a year ago

…are we complaining about people living in India, or American/Australian citizens that have Indian national heritage? The former seems more like an outsourcing issue than an Indian issue. The latter… didn’t we learn in the 90s not to stereotype people?

If I posted a comment complaining about how black Americans are criminals, I think I’d rightfully be called out for oversimplifying in a hurtful way. What am I missing here?

elisharobinson

a year ago

Some of the reasons why this is happening :

-> Getting an assignment in the US is viewed as a reward for employees who work in the company for 5+ years.

-> H1B visa employess are given a 50% minimum discount to market rate. cause lol what are you gonna do . Quit and go back in the Queue for H1B.

-> nepotism / favoritism self explanatory.

-> Are more willing to work 40+ hours a week. Less likely to take vacations.

These are the observations of myself and members of my family who are from India.

infecto

a year ago

Is that discount really true? There is a definite discount but I have never seen 50%, all of this data is online, you can see the payroll for H1B employees.

https://h1bdata.info/

victor106

a year ago

I have personally experienced this in all my previous projects and my current one.

H1B does suppress wages as employees don’t care how much they are paid. They only care that they stay on H1 so they get their green cards.

However, one they get their green card they feel the same that H1B’s suppress wages…lol…

infecto

a year ago

Eh, your not wrong but my counter point is when I have looked up people before in the public data, their salary was in line what I and others were making in the same role. The H1B data does not list name but it is detailed enough that you can generally guess who it is in small-medium size companies.

a year ago

>Yall want to Drive the combine ( Managment, Software development, VC ) but dont want to do the dirty work ( QA, Devops, IT admin )

Woah, less caps and racist thoughts and more critical thinking please. I am saying taking a simple average between the two like you did is flawed for a number of reasons.

1) You don't even have an apples to apples comparison. H1B data is based on prevailing wage which is just base pay. So taking your link, 129K - $171K/yr comparing to your other data, 100-150k. Lets take a simple average. and say the glassdoor wage is 150k, that means 50% minimum, remember you said minimum, is 75k. That does not really track with 125k.

2) Prevailing wage is based not only on the role but the geographical location too. An overall average between those two datasets is a very rough guide and I think its better to do direct comparisons at a company level or regional level. Again there is still a lot of normalization and cleanup to do in the datasets, the H1B data is not great for analysis right out of the gate.

Your case of a minimum 50% reduction in base pay is hard to defend except in outlier cases. If it was closer to 25% I think its a much easier number to defend.

elisharobinson

a year ago

so you would admit that a 25% diff in base pay would be plausible . so would you also admit a 25% diff in benifits would also be plausible . granted the total diff would work out to somewhere around 30~40% range , but i still hold if we are comparing true apple to apple and we exclude FAANG , we would most likely get in the 50% range.

loufe

a year ago

I think that's an unfairly dismissive take and the "going to restaurants" bit is a mischaracterization at best.

There massive difference is WHERE the discrimination is taking place. Most would not move to India or any other place and impose their culture and exclude locals in a fair and just world. I'm not saying it doesn't take place, and yes colonialism happened and was far worse, but we're talking about what SHOULD be.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

a year ago

this is fascinating to me because it’s how i have handled my career and it’s had unexpected positive and negative effects. all-in-all i’m more satisfied than my friend group with my day to day work existence but am steps behind them in the traditional career path milestones. though i lack the titles they have, i’m squarely median when it comes to annual base income, which is comfortable and provides very well for my family. however, i’m beginning to age and realize that potential employers are beginning to balk at my title/“informal” leadership (read “experience”) with my age and salary and duration in the workforce.

mdorazio

a year ago

The parent post was clearly asking how to fight back against a culture of exclusionism against non-Indians, which leads to racism.

thih9

a year ago

And quadrifoliate (this comment's grandparent) showed that exclusionism against Indians similarly exists and is harmful. Very much on topic in my opinion.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

> Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population?

Non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US, and I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that non-Hispanic white culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US.

Sure, it might be the dominant culture — but there are other subcultures like Black or Hispanic cultures that are pretty strong here. Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria? If not, then why are you singling out Indians?

miningape

a year ago

Hence the quotation marks: "native" - you're just derailing a legitimate line of reasoning.

> I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that European-American culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US

Like it or not, it is the dominant culture especially in professional environments. If you want to have a conversation about why that is the case, what else it could be, etc. thats fine! But it's not the kind of conversation I'm looking to have here.

> Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria?

If they are doing it to the detriment of the overall business yes! - the line of reasoning follows for a predominantly Black business that is having a White enclave forming. Or a Hispanic cultured business with a Slavic enclave forming. Even more importantly a multicultural environment which is having 1 group overtake it. It's fundamentally a job of business leaders to set the tone and direction of company culture - and this is one aspect of it.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

> Like it or not, it is the dominant culture especially in professional environments.

At least sometimes it's not, which is why the OP feels so excluded and is asking for tips on how to navigate the clearly unfamiliar feeling of not being able to just "fit in" as part of the dominant culture.

The reality is that the US is a melting pot with a lot of subcultures, and you should learn to navigate those subcultures instead of demanding that they conform to some mythical default.

Maybe next time the OP should show some curiosity about what their coworkers are joking about, and shyly ask for a seat at the table. I have done it plenty of times.

fennecfoxy

a year ago

Shouldn't the members of the enclave proactively reach out themselves, then? As the host country has tried to make things more comfortable for them to start with.

pvaldes

a year ago

Hispanic was initially just a way to tag the white non-protestant. Currently is a loose box to include a mix of Mediterranean, African and American natives. Some of this people definitely have American natives on their family lines and other are not even related with Europeans or not much.

When Hispanic mix with Irish, or English, or French or North European, they are simply called "white". A lot of Spaniards are as much "white" in their aspect as one could ask for. They are just labeled as "non white" for outdated reasons but people always chuckle about it. Is just silly.

shrubble

a year ago

Actually Whites have as much if not more claims to North America than any other group; there’s multiple times that they came to NA, including the Solutreans of about 12000 years ago: https://insider.si.edu/2012/03/ice-age-mariners-from-europe-... ; plus the Viking settlement of 1021; plus the more recent fact of the USA being settled and turning wildernesses into the agricultural and technological powerhouse of today.

selimthegrim

a year ago

That’s funny I don’t see anything about this in the constitution

Also, weren’t Solutreans brown skinned?

kshGa

a year ago

The dominant culture of Google and Microsoft when they were founded was [...]. Now they have Indian CEOs and companies like Cognizant bring in H1B visas from India.

There is nothing organic about that.

Personally I have no experience with Indian co-workers, but I do know that Black and Hispanic people do not exclude whites at all. I have only great experiences with them.

sandworm101

a year ago

>> non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US

Then to where is it native? Don't deny a culture its existence just because it isn't the first culture to arise within a particular area. Example: Mormon culture and religion is "native" the US despite certainly not being the first culture in the area.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

I am not the one throwing around the word "native" casually. To cite your example, Salt Lake City was founded less than 200 years ago whereas Puebloans have been living in the area for several thousands of years.

You can certainly make a claim that Mormon culture is "native" to Utah, but I think at 200 v/s 5000+ you can expect that claim to be contested.

karpatic

a year ago

Funny enough, the definition has nothing to do with ancestry. "Native: a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not."

miningape

a year ago

Yeah, this is the exact sense in which I wrote it originally - but I sensed the screams of 1000 idiots and wrote "native" to try avoid that entire line of conversation. It seems though that my efforts went unnoticed - oh well!

mc32

a year ago

People born in the US are native to the US -or are you arguing for de sanguinis citizenship? Chinese and Indians do follow de sanguinis, so maybe you’re making the case?

lupusreal

a year ago

> Non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US,

Weird exclusion; Hispanic white Americans aren't native to the US either; their ancestors came from Spain.

a year ago

I'm not sure what your point is. "You can't talk about your problem because I have a problem as well" seems to be all you're saying.

A better question would be how to prevent people from excluding each other based on group membership.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

> I'm not sure what your point is.

That's a good question. I suppose my point is that this is not something you have "fight back" against. Lots of people get excluded from social groups in professional settings due to some silly link that their coworkers have with each other.

Learning to overcome your lack of cultural commonality with coworkers and and breaking into social groups is something that all of us need to do at some point. In my case — I sucked it up, refused to learn golf but bonded with coworkers over board games; and ate the appetizers at the steakhouse.

A tip for OP would be to try doing the equivalent thing in their context. Go up to your Indian coworkers and ask if you can accompany them to the restaurant. I promise you it will be fine.

ethbr1

a year ago

> I promise you it will be fine.

Just pass on the gulab jamun if you value your liver.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

Pass on like 90% of the stuff that has fat and sugar. It is not representative of a household Indian meal, but rather of a rare feast.

If you go more regularly, a somewhat healthy meal at an Indian restaurant is:

- The tandoor chicken (not the one in gravy)

- The veggie salads and/or yogurt raita

- Whole wheat rotis if you can find them

- Any of the vegetables that don't have a ton of cream (cauliflower is one that's reliably dry)

I can't pretend that I don't indulge with anything beyond that; but I tend to not be a regular at the Indian restaurants here.

kyleee

a year ago

I can’t seem to say no to a bit of gulab jamun. And saag, with or without paneer. How healthy is saag? I tell myself it’s mostly spinach but I know there is milk and milk fat in there usually I think and maybe butter?

rldjbpin

a year ago

as a foreign/outsider working in a company, the expectation lies on the outsider to adapt to local/company culture.

it is interesting to observe how people react to being in such a position when they are in a foreign work culture in their own soil. neither parties are completely at the right, but the fact that it is completely fine in one side but unacceptable for the other is so fascinating to me.

swasheck

a year ago

i’m sorry for your experience(s) and how frustrating that must be. what you’ve experienced isn’t “right” and while it’s valid that you bring it up as a general concern and experience, it comes across as though you’re justifying how OP experiences their own work environment. as someone who has essentially experienced the same treatment, but from the opposite side, this is an opportunity you had to validate and confirm the presence of such behavior while expanding the scope of its presence. now we’re hung up on restaurants and golf courses and choosing sides instead of discussing the core problem

gosub100

a year ago

you chose to move to another country. thats the difference

the_gorilla

a year ago

[flagged]

quadrifoliate

a year ago

I am just using a signature American phrase[1]. If anything, this is a mark of how assimilated I am!

I mean no contempt; I am happy to live in a flyover state. Also, the state did not "allow me" to live here, the Federal Government did; as anyone with an elementary knowledge of American government principles should be able to discern.

Your response though, seems to show some anti-immigrant anger. I am sorry you feel that way, and hope you find happiness!

----------------------------------------

Cthulhu_

a year ago

What do you mean "allows them"? Whatever happened to the ideals of freedom and liberty and whatnot in the US?

the_gorilla

a year ago

American States have their own culture and identity. The ideals of America was never being an economic zone to house the entire third world, who think the only utility of a state should be to fly over it.

ttyprintk

a year ago

The founding of the American colonies was very much a gutter for economic classes. Warren Buffet wouldn’t exist today without European trash being indentured.

sourcepluck

a year ago

Are you aware that the US ranks below Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Thailand on the UN's sustainable development report from 2024?

It might be appropriate to update your picture of the place to reflect the reality. Your views here seem to be predicated on some notion of the US as a place the entire "third world" wants to move to - perhaps you should consider the fact that it's not really top of everyone's list anymore?

With some notable exceptions where it may well be top of the list - the obvious example being some third-level institutions there who have prestige and networking opportunities which are hard to beat, if you can afford it.

miningape

a year ago

> Are you aware that the US ranks below Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Thailand on the UN's sustainable development report from 2024?

Are you aware of how shit of a metric that is? It's literally the %age of GDP spent on sustainable energy, so the US could still be spending more than all those countries combined and still have a lower %age.

Let's also not forget who gives out the loans for sustainable development, and who sets up the economic incentives.

This is also the equivalent of saying "You're much less likely to get robbed in Africa, they have a faster declining crime rate than Europe." As a baseline Europe is safer and it's therefore harder to decrease the crime rate further[0]. Going from 100 murders a day to 89 is not better than going from 10 to 9.

[0] I made up this example - no clue if it's true

sourcepluck

a year ago

I am aware that it's an imperfect metric yes, but think it's still sufficient to back up the point I was making in this case.

nelblu

a year ago

As an Indian immigrant I had noticed this very early on too. It made me very uncomfortable when some of us would crack jokes in non-English language while there were others around who didn't understand the language. After first few years I stopped working for companies that had mostly Indians in IT. I must say I have been lucky since then to always find a good mix of diverse backgrounds in my team that it has not been a problem.

quadrifoliate

a year ago

As a fellow Indian immigrant, I actually share your discomfort, and always try to be inclusive and diverse in my social groups. Most of my Indian coworkers and friends behave this way — we came to the US to be a part of a mixed culture, so our social groups should be diverse.

For now, I've only had to experience it in school and university. It's been awful every time. Yours is also a sentiment many people have expressed to me about other Indians once they've opened up to me and realized I won't care if they say something that could be racist.

eru

a year ago

> How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management?

Vote with your feet, if you don't like it?

ImJamal

a year ago

This will just exacerbate the problem though? There will be more and more Indians in the company...

ErigmolCt

a year ago

Cultural bonding is natural, but it's critical that it doesn't undermine team spirit or create divisions. Is there any possibility to escalate the issue with your immediate manager?

mock-possum

a year ago

> to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break

Don’t threaten me with a good time

a year ago

>All these culture things (except for the first regarding PO which is spit-in-the-face level of unprofessionalism) add up,

you said it yourself, the first one was unprofessional and should be avoided and may be cause for action. The other things, learn to live as the minority in a group and accept what the group values.

I mean maybe your colleagues follow suit about eating Indian food because Indian food is delicious? "Hey you guys know a good Indian food place around here - that's great!" would be my response.

throwaway48476

a year ago

It sounds like they do have a group with its own values.

amazinteresting

a year ago

Best course of action is symmetrical response.

eru

a year ago

What makes you think so?

Usually, the sanest recourse in these kinds of situations is to cut your losses and vote with your feet.

bbor

a year ago

I’m gonna dip into politics a bit for my assertion that “fight racism with racism” isn’t a great move, either for the societal long term or the personal/legal short term.

zo1

a year ago

That is the entire premise of DEI initiatives. It's yet another "an eye for an eye".

skywhopper

a year ago

a year ago

Please don't take this personally, or as an attack on you. But having seen DEI first-hand, and the "equally qualified" people it has actively displaced and disenfranchised, I'd have to say that this view avoids the ugly reality on the ground wrt DEI. There is an entire country currently affected by it's poor implementation, and it's failure is just seen as more reason for efforts to be doubled and for more-extreme quotas to be put in place.

j45

a year ago

There's nothing personal to take. So you shouldn't take it personally.

Perhaps, instead we can think about how could it be taken it professionally..

There's equal or better qualified candidates for every position that don't make it to the table because of existing gatekeeping.

That would likely have the effect of helping borderline candidates who can fail upwards, maybe do that a little less... or level up.

What's curious is the presumption that one persons experience or interpretation (yours) doesn't mean a better perspective, experience can't exist.

Is it possible you might not be the only one experiencing DEI?

Gatekeeping has been a thing that's existed for a very, very, very long time. Often to the benefit of many of the people complaining about new kinds of space-making that affect gatekeeping that they didn't realize benefitted them.

This current wave of DEI is definitely early. It's not perfect. Neither was the gatekeeping that preceded it.

Other things that were early got a lot more leeway and understanding. But it can shows what some folks want to see happen (or not happen) one way or the other.

gruez

a year ago

Are you claiming positive discrimination has not been advanced under the banner of DEI, or that it has but wasn't true DEI?

zo1

a year ago

Have you been on the receiving end of DEI? The same way a minority has been on the receiving end of racism?

We can all wax lyrical and paint pretty pictures about the noble goals of DEI. But till we get an equal and fair world, the ugly picture is that DEI starts by dividing the pie into smaller parts, and taking from one to give to another, instead of making the pie bigger for everyone.

And if history is anything to go by, most "DEI"-like efforts never ever reach that end-goal. They perpetuate indefinitely until they create yet another oppressed or previously-disadvantaged class, and the cycle will just repeat.

ethbr1

a year ago

The biggest problem with DEI policies in practice was that companies entrusted HR to implement them.

HR at most companies doesn't do nuance or complexity.

j45

a year ago

DEI is more about getting equally qualified candidates to the table that are ignored or missed.

Yes that makes it more competitive.

Or less-competitive at an advantage to some and both others if it stayed the same way.

gruez

a year ago

That's the motte of the DEI motte-and-bailey. The bailey contains policies like race based quotas or preferential treatment.

j45

a year ago

Race based quotas seem like very US things.

Theres lots of ways to improve hiring.

If holding space for equally qualified candidates is preferential treatment, is it having to exist because of the gatekeeping that existed before it?

Still, it remains important for any practice to do a good job of helping everyone understand how it's working better.

Too often companies jump to signal trends and keep doing whatever they were all along. Like organizations who's leadership looks nothing like the pool of qualified candidates in the respective country.

zo1

a year ago

Oh that may be the "on-paper" goal of DEI, and I'd be all for it if it stayed that way; it sounds very very fair. But it never stays that way, and quotas enter the picture before long.

j45

a year ago

Tricky and slippery rationalizations are something I try to be mindful of.

I put forward a single simple point. Since it's resonating in a response, it might be worth considering why, and see how our viewpoints form and how much of it might be rooted in isolating emotions like fear.

In discussing, an open mind to me is one that can openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own, and seeing if they're open to growing or changing their viewpoint.

Maybe.. the way your country does DEI is trying to do the opposite of the race based separation it did prior and doesn't know if any other levers exist?

One nice thing is you're inheriting the world and can help make it the way you think it should be instead of wanting to be a passive beneficiary of past gatekeeping baselines.

Hypothetically speaking... could openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't our own.. be similar to believing software could be better, if it was only improved, by trying to improve ourselves and building software better?

the_gorilla

a year ago

> DEI is more about getting equally qualified candidates to the table that are ignored or missed.

This is the first time I've heard that. The normal party line is that, yes, they're worse at the job but it's because they never got the opportunity to learn. You can observe in colleges that DEI-appointed students do massively worse overall despite probably being given even more leeway than normal students.

j45

a year ago

Wow, ok. So that kind of idea is really completely new, so it can't be valid?

I think it's pretty easy to go learn the spectrum of DEI.

The world is generally run with gatekeeping, which means withholding access to opportunity to improve one's life to a selected group for a long time.

It's possible that your country may codify gatekeeping and privilege, and the only way they may know how is to do the same thing in the opposite way.

It might not be a good way of holding space for qualified candidates to get to the same table, or even, not allowing an average person to "get a chance" to fail upwards except if you're from one background.

The relevance of DEI shouldn't be held exclusively with its implementation at any given time, as long as it's improving. Kind of like software, maybe.

I'm not sure where your observation is based on - happy to learn and read from any studies though beyond anecdotal differences.

It would be like generalizing that lots of rich kids end up doing nothing as well after their parents pay for their way into and school. Doesn't make it true as a generalization of everyone though.

the_gorilla

a year ago

> Wow, ok. So that kind of idea is really completely new, so it can't be valid?

Theoretically it could be, but you should be aware if your argument directly contradicts years of other people advocating for DEI. The idea being sold isn't "we need jobs to be more merit based" but "we don't have enough merit and have to discriminate".

> It's possible that your country may codify gatekeeping and privilege, and the only way they may know how is to do the same thing in the opposite way.

My country, the US, codifies that you're not allowed to racially discriminate. Somehow this doesn't stop people from declaring that we must explicitly perform racially discrimination in order to offset some perceived discrimination.

> The relevance of DEI shouldn't be held exclusively with its implementation at any given time, as long as it's improving. Kind of like software, maybe.

The relevance is that I'm a race it explicitly disadvantages, and so it my family. It's illegal, racial discrimination is apparently immoral when it's done to anyone else, and it needs to go.

> I'm not sure where your observation is based on - happy to learn and read from any studies though beyond anecdotal differences.

Go look at medical schools. High scoring Whites and Asians are about as likely to get in as extremely poorly performing Black students.

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/med1.jpg?x850...

j45

a year ago

Thanks for sharing.

Your country, explicitly codifies race based tracking in universities, long before this DEI wave. It's so incredibly wack. Other countries have better language to identify anything unique and under-represented, and maybe are less awkward but still awkward at it.

Historically, the creation of places of higher learning in the US were not created for women to be accepted, let alone people of color.

It's helpful to take a more historical look at how those pesky college application forms got the checkboxes they did, and how they were added at the moments of change in the particular decade. Imagine all the people who don't get counted.

What kind of system names an entire group of people a whole continent like Asia? :)

There is historical merit to people not being counted... not counting... or existing.. or qualifying as human enough to vote.

When it comes to data.. what gets measured, gets managed.. and maybe some of the wording of what got measured had some unconscious bias.

It's also not about whataboutism seeking a perfect solution to undermine change that is trying to be better for more people.

I have some international experience in the academic industry and student data collection, management, etc. Race based data in the US always stands out compared to other countries.

While it's true that disadvantaged children regardless of background can have similar challenges, its no contest that people of color experience it so very much more.

Discrimination starts with the contract that there is a privileged contract place prior to it being adjusted for said offence.

There are awful references to suggesting people of color "work harder" .. maybe that is advice for everyone?

I'm not going to participate in taking shots at any one group of students, especially black students who are way more disadvantaged per capita than any other.

About the med-school link - isn't it a little dated (and risking a stereotype) to believe that the best grades are the only thing important about getting into med school? Great doctors are well rounded people who connect with and help all walks of life - understanding people is a key skill beyond maniacal memorization and regurgitation for years of study to only stop and impossibly be behind research after graduation.

Cthulhu_

a year ago

It is if you look at it in a divisive, "us" vs "them" fashion. However, it's to try and make up for hundreds or more years of active suppression and exclusion from society and opportunities.

Ask yourselves, who paid for your education? Was it pulled up by the bootstraps rags-to-riches, or did you get help from e.g. family? Where did you grow up, and how did that contribute to your current career / life?

Now imagine you didn't have those opportunities, because your family (going back generations) never was able to build up generational wealth and comfort.

DEI is an attempt to make up for that. Is it ideal? No. Does it come across as discrimination to the priviledged people / classes? Sure. Does it personally affect you? Probably not, but I don't know you (generalised you, the reader).

That said, if you don't like DEI, vote and act accordingly. Work to make sure everyone earns a liveable wage, owns a house, gets a good education and consequent steady job opportunities regardless of familial wealth. Be and act anti-racist and anti-classist, because it's not enough to simply "not be racist".

ErigmolCt

a year ago

It may feel satisfying, but it risks escalating tensions and fostering more division rather than solving the core issue.

giantg2

a year ago

Imagine being autistic and rarely having that bonding you talk about, and certainly not with entire teams.

matrix87

a year ago

> Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit

a year ago

I think thats an unfair reading of the comment you replied to - racist and exclusionary behaviour is rightly no longer tolerated in policy intent (if not always in actuality) at professional corporations.

The issue highlighted here is that it seems at times that there are exceptions that people are afraid to call out and criticise, especially at lower levels.

ttyprintk

a year ago

I don’t have an opinion if someone is wondering whether one of those cultures is more worthwhile to seek acceptance. But I learned a lot about exclusion from an Indian coworker who was not heterosexual.

bakugo

a year ago

> You're white colleagues making white jokes. Hiring only white people. Going to white restaurants.

Pretty sure white people aren't mass immigrating to India and doing this there.

throwawayha

a year ago

Eat Pray Love?

user

a year ago

[deleted]

KwisatzHaderack

a year ago

> white restaurants

LMAO! What are white restaurants?

pk_anon123

a year ago

I just posted this comment with a new account to check how easily hearsay influences people's opinions with no backing, whatsoever. I hope this thread will stay up as a reminder to stay civil and not get carried away by clouded judgement.

pm90

a year ago

How is this discrimination manifested? How do these managers know your country of origin?

mattmaroon

a year ago

An Indian person can spot a Pakistani (and vice versa) easily. There’s a good bit of historical enmity between the two nations.

Cthulhu_

a year ago

Does this apply to castes as well? I mean in western Europe you can often pick out the classism based on how people dress, have their hair and what their accent is (I'm very obvious because of my "provincial" accent and terrible sense of style, lol).

Classism in the Netherlands isn't too bad though, unless you're from the old aristocracies (they live in certain areas, go to private schools, often have archaic letter combos like Y, AE, CK, or apostrophes in their multi-word surnames, etc [1]), they definitely live on their own island. Often end up in politics, too, because so it goes.

[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Nederlandse_adellijk...

consp

a year ago

> Classism in the Netherlands isn't too bad though

Wait until they figure out you earn less than them. "You cannot understand [rich people bs 'struggle']" I've had the misfortune of hearing over and over again, them showing a complete lack of any form of empathy for anyone except their own class.

dartharva

a year ago

No? I am an Indian living in India, and if a Pakistani person were to live next door I wouldn't be able to make it out unless he told me himself.

mattmaroon

a year ago

Im neither but I can tell a Pakistani accent from an Indian one. Is that not the case there?

And you would certainly know if you were working with someone, at least here.

I suppose I have spent a lot of time with Indian Americans but not as much with Indians in India (just zoom calls) so that’s interesting.

dartharva

a year ago

Pakistani accents often perfectly coincide with Punjabi and UP (Indian states) accents.

lazide

a year ago

Pakistani’s are almost always Muslim (due to Partition [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India]), and will often act and speak differently in several telltale ways for anyone who knows what to look for. Both given and family/surnames are also often telltales.

And if you think Casteism is a bitch, Pakistani/Indian (or Indian Hindu vs Indian Muslim) is a bitch and a half. Just try to apply for a visa for India and see how many times they ask if you or any of your relatives are from Pakistan to get a taste.

Edit: ooh, downvotes away. Hah! No better way to tell when you hit a nerve than the torches come out.

Andaith

a year ago

This is the most common form of racism I've personally seen in my life, for what it's worth.

The funny part is having both Indians & Pakistanis pull you aside and tell you to watch out for the other ones because "They don't shower every day." I've had that happen a few times now...

gruez

a year ago

>>A lot of hatred passes unnoticed beacuse of the lumping together of the South Asian immigrants in all discussions.

seper8

a year ago

I should have phrased it differently, sorry.

bravetraveler

a year ago

As a casual observer, their culture seems to include considerable classism; to the degree that 'where are you from?' appears to be an extremely common and loaded question [saved for the locals]. I only recognize it because it exists in mine, not a judgement.

DebtDeflation

a year ago

Don't tiptoe around the topic. By class you mean caste. As a white guy who has worked in tech for 25+ years and has made many Indian friends, I continue to be astounded by how fixated many (obviously not all) of them are on caste. In particular, how much time and effort gets spent trying to suss out each others' caste by asking questions like you noted. Every time we get a new Indian team member and the existing ones start asking him where his parents are from and I see him start to uncomfortably evade answering while all of the other non_Indians in the room have no idea what is happening, it starts to make ME feel uncomfortable.

bravetraveler

a year ago

Can't tiptoe around words I don't know :P I did say 'casual observer'! Thank you for sharing, reading to do. Seems related to my frustrations as a low-born but now well-made American.

edit: I say 'seems' here lightly; a system is conveniently reinforced by depriving participants words and the ability (or even desire) to identify. Time and time again the gut feeling is a well-established thing.

dartharva

a year ago

And as an Indian who has lived for 25+ years in India, I continue to be astounded by how fixated white guys like you are on caste when I have never once witnessed caste-based discrimination in my life, despite belonging to a categorized "originally backward" caste.

Cthulhu_

a year ago

I hope that the caste system is on its way out though, although for that to really happen there need to be long-term societal reforms, just like with classism in e.g. Europe. Especially in the UK, working/middle/upper class is still very much a thing.

throwawayha

a year ago

Caste is a disease for sure. Divides people for the benefit of dividers and the few..

redrove

a year ago

AmericanChopper

a year ago

To say that some quality is embedded in a culture isn’t even close to the same as saying all people originating from that culture possess that quality. The extent to which India’s (racist) caste system is embedded in its culture is hardly up for serious debate, the influence it has in India has basically been proven by science at this point.

a year ago

I do expect new arrivals to acculturate, not to Judeo-Christian values but rather to liberalism. (In the philosophical sense, not the bastardized way the term is used in American politics.)

This is because liberalism evolved as a response to sectarianism and developed tools to allow people with different worldviews to live and work together.

onetimeacc123

a year ago

[dead]

beo5

a year ago

Can I say then - what a surprise a blanket racist statement. And to add comments by others on how superior their culture is. Must be a American/European.

avip

a year ago

Racism is embedded in human nature and in every culture. Though it takes different forms. I don't think "Indians" deserve any special mention on that one.

hnbad

a year ago

It's telling that we're quick to ascribe anything bad to "human nature" while balking at the notion that anything positive might also be human nature. Greed and exploitation? Yes, absolutely, human nature, nothing you can do about it. Racism? Totally human nature, just look at this random animal species. Cooperation, trust, hospitality? No, those must be unique virtues expressed only by the pure of heart or the naive, just think of the wolves.

Nevermind that "race" as a concept did not exist in the modern sense in Western cultures prior to colonization despite the exposure to other peoples with other skin tones from other parts of the world. Nevermind that cooperation and aiding the weak and forming alliances has been the only thing keeping us alive as naked, defenseless animals that need to sustain our young for years before they can carry their weight, feed themselves, let alone fend for themselves.

fakedang

a year ago

> Nevermind that "race" as a concept did not exist in the modern sense in Western cultures prior to colonization despite the exposure to other peoples with other skin tones from other parts of the world.

https://x.com/MohabMo5102/status/1494070281731809281?mx=2

Also someone please tell me why were harems in Mamlukian and Ottoman courts largely filled with Slavic and Circassian men and women?

hnbad

a year ago

I'm not sure what the tweet has to do with your question.

To your question: I'm referring to modern Western racism which is built on the scientific racism that became popular when there were economic incentives to explain why chattel slavery is okay when you do it with some people when it's otherwise not okay to do with others. This was downstream from a massive need for cheap labor in the colonies to produce exotic goods to export to Europe for profit.

I don't know why you're asking for an explanation of random unsourced and unqualified historical factoids (without mentioning e.g. which harems, which courts, where and in what time period, which seem kind of important specifics when using vague generalisations like "largely") - maybe ask whoever you learned that from unless you're "just asking questions".

But if you want a general answer to "why is there discrimination against groups outside the imperial core" mine would be that it is easier to justify an exploitative power hiearchy, especially one that subjugates the majority of "its own" people, if you declare outside forces as non-human or sub-human to prevent fraternization which might challenge your rule.

You can easily find this happening in sexism/"patriarchy": men are humans, women are different because they can get pregnant so they are more emotional, more deceitful, stupider, incapable of abstract thought, too easy to manipulate to deserve voting rights, more likely to cheat on their partners because they want the best genes for their offspring, naturally nurturing and caring, inherently better at social skills, inherently risk averse and unfit for leadership, etc etc whatever whatever. Or, as I already said, racism: white people are humans, Asians are different because they're clever but have no soul and operate like a hive mind, Black people are different because they're stronger but impulsive and child-like and must be disciplined to protect them from themselves, Arabs are different because they're deceitful and uncultured and only know how to steal and destroy and breed, etc etc whatever whatever. Heck, you can even find it in the trappings of "enlightened" critiques of democracy (or defense of capitalism, i.e. the centralisation of control of "capital"): us studied high-IQ people of wealth of course should get a say in things but most people allowed to vote are very stupid, easy to manipulate, only seek to reaffirm their biases, bordering on mentally incapable of managing their own life but also of course completely at fault for everything they suffer, etc etc whatever whatever. All of these are bullshit just-so generalisation that just happen to neatly explain why we (men, white folks, academics, people of wealth, etc) deserve to be in charge and anyone who isn't in that group not only does not deserve to have any say but it is in fact in their best interest for us to be in charge of their life too and if this just happens to benefit us immensely, that is only by pure circumstance and what harm does it do anyway if that is the case.

Also, I'm not talking about individual bigotry or stereotypes. "Scientific" racism existed to help perpetuate a system of power relations by justifying the ownership and subjugation of groups of people. Caste systems does and medieval European feudalism did much the same. "Tribalism" however is a red herring because in tribal systems, society is confined to the tribe itself and interactions between tribes are, essentially, diplomacy. Once society expands past a tribe, we usually use the term "nepotism" (or "networking" if you want a positive spin).

fakedang

a year ago

> I don't know why you're asking for an explanation of random unsourced and unqualified historical factoids (without mentioning e.g. which harems, which courts, where and in what time period, which seem kind of important specifics when using vague generalisations like "largely") - maybe ask whoever you learned that from unless you're "just asking questions".

I literally said Ottoman and Mamlukian harems. There was only one Ottoman dynasty in one place in one historical time period. As there was only one Mamlukian harem in one place in one contiguous historic period.

FYI both of those dynasties, as did many other kingdoms and empires, had a strong preference for Slavic and Caucasian (as in from the Caucasus) consorts, as can be seen from the ethnicities and religions of most of their dynastic rulers' mothers. And Islamic and Mongol rulers were notorious for keeping younger male slaves from both regions as companions. Heck, the Mamluk dynasty itself was formed by a bunch of Cuman and Circassian slaves who ended up being so powerful as to control their Ayyubid masters.

hnbad

a year ago

That's the only thing you felt the need to elaborate on? Okay, so I guess you're "just asking questions" then.

rexreed

But the "important" people, upper management who decide to contract with WITCH, and the upper management of WITCH who run such strategy, they all profit. The managers and/or C-level who outsource sight-unseen with no quality enforcement disappear with their rewards before institutional inertia stops papering over their decisions. The WITCH companies pocket huge amounts of money while paying pittance to line workers and providing worse than zero service.

eru

a year ago

Yeah, that sounds pretty dreadful.

A few jobs ago, when I was working for a third-tier legacy bank, my manager joked that all the outsourcing they were doing was actually really useful and pragmatic, because it means they can fail their IT projects cheaper. (The implication being that their projects were by and large inevitably doomed anyway.)

commandlinefan

a year ago

> a lot of negativity about Indians

There isn't, though. There's a lot of negativity about _H1B_s in the comments here, but you conflate that with Indian.

dang

a year ago

There was, unfortunately, but most of it has since been (correctly) flagged.

ssbash

a year ago

Respectfully, I don’t think enough has been removed.

As someone with Indian heritage it’s super disheartening to see plenty of comments negatively generalizing a diaspora of over 1B people.

Treating anyone who presents as Indian as apart of cultural monolith is absurd. I was born and raised in the US, and have no connection to the alleged cronyism or caste-based discrimination.

Many of these comments make blanket statements about Indians. I don’t think the same moderation guidelines are being applied in this case. Replace Indians with Europeans, Black people or any other ethnicity and it should become clear that this violates the site’s guidelines.

Here are a few top level examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41786112

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41786205

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41786534

eru

a year ago

> As someone with Indian heritage it’s super disheartening to see plenty of comments negatively generalizing a diaspora of over 1B people.

HKH2

a year ago

Sorry, nowadays we're supposed to believe everything is programmable/reprogrammable.

dartharva

a year ago

Discrimination has largely been "reprogrammable" though. E.g. America doesn't have segregation anymore.

wslh

a year ago

a year ago

You are oversimplifying it:

NBA - Physical attributes do matter a lot. NBAs management, team owners, coaches tend to be non-Black.

Nobel prize - Perhaps because a good chunk of Jews tend to be into academia and research life.

I cannot comment on sales/marketing/real estate in US as I don’t live there but I’d like to believe that isn’t an active effort to keep non-whites out of these areas.

All of those things are completely different from being actively left out of meetings just because you aren’t an Indian.

hshshshsvsv

a year ago

You are over indexing on leaving out of business meetings as a general trait of Indians. It's not. Don't you realize how stupid and racist that sounds?

mr90210

a year ago

It is you the racist by referring to Indians as a race.

Learn about your own people first, the Indo-Aryans.

usrname

a year ago

Damm Microsoft its crazy company

mindentropy

a year ago

I am seeing the flight to low cost countries now termed as "Best" cost countries is afoot in Europe. Germany has shot itself in the foot by destroying its energy sector. Now that the energy prices have shot through the roof most of the industries are going to get outsourced. The thirst for cheap labour and where the laws especially labour laws are lax is a wet dream for management.

Lutzb

a year ago

Hm, the available data does not support your point/sentiment that energy prices are increasing for industrial customers in Germany. (see https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/bdew-strompre... or https://www.statista.com/statistics/1050448/industrial-elect...)

From https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/industry-electricity-pr...

> Economist and economy ministry advisor Jens Südekum called the analysis’s results “astonishing.” Commenting on social media platform X, Südekum pointed out that industry prices had fallen “significantly” and that price indicators continued to point downwards. The trend would be similar for private households, albeit at a slower pace, he argued. Once current contracts expire, Südekum said lower prices should become widespread in new ones. “Overall, the BDEW figures don’t chime with current mood in debates, which is that everything is going down the drain due to high energy prices,” he argued.

mindentropy

a year ago

I understand where you are coming from, especially with the data. As I grew older I rarely trust data as it is not independent, manipulated or given a false view. It should be supported by physical evidences which is often missing.

An anecdotal evidence, a large semiconductor in Germany with fabs is moving to "best" cost countries and the message provided is clear by the management. Positions are moved to "best" cost countries and new offices in these locations are being opened. Support jobs i.e. back office, accounting etc are in the process first. R&D is next and many engineers have taken the hint. The biggest customers for them is automotive as is usually the case for most of the German companies. If automotive market falls then they are in serious trouble. Make what you want out of this.

hnbad

a year ago

FWIW there was a huge surge in energy costs following the war in Ukraine (due to the reduction in supply of Russian gas) which was dampened by the government with a subsidized price cap at 0.40€/kWh - for consumers anyway, as far as I'm aware there were different subsidies for industry.

But consumer prices have largely stabilized at a range of 0.25€ - 0.35€ although you'll also find some prices listed as low as 0.20€ or less if you are willing to price hop a lot.

Apparently there will also be price cuts in the North and East of Germany as well as Bavaria in the near future but I don't know the specifics of that.

jansan

a year ago

> FWIW there was a huge surge in energy costs following the war in Ukraine (due to the reduction in supply of Russian gas)

And due to the fact that they decided to shut down the last nuclear power plants directly after that, which further reduced supply and until today I consider this one of the most stupid political decisions ever made.

Lutzb

a year ago

I think the 4.1 percent that nuclear was providing was not having the impact you are assuming. Also the amount of energy produced by natural gas and renewables more than offset the cost of nuclear.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

jansan

a year ago

Well, electricity consumption has fallen quite a bit, because energy intensive industries (like chemical industry) already left the country. Energy prices are still high (not as high as 2022) and they would probably be much higher if those industries were still there.

Unfortunately there is little reason to invest in Germany at the moment. It will get worse(they are already announcing an increase in health insurance rates) before it will get better.

Lutzb

a year ago

Do you have any numbers regarding companies that have left Germany because of energy costs?

jansan

a year ago

No, but news are everywhere if you open your eyes.

https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/basf-chem...

https://www.electrive.net/2023/05/23/volkswagen-streicht-woh...

https://www.chemietechnik.de/markt/lanxess-spart-und-schlies...